The present invention relates to a mixer apparatus and a sound signal processing method suited for use in a digital mixer, and a program therefor.
Generally, in digital mixers, equalize processing, sound volume adjusting processing, etc. are performed individually on sound signals of a plurality of input channels, and then the thus-processed sound signals are supplied to a plurality of mixing buses where these sound signals are mixed together. Because the number of the input channels processable by one digital mixer is limited, there has been known and used the so-called “cascade connection” technique. Such cascade connection is intended to couple or input the output signals (“cascade signals”) of the individual mixing buses of one digital mixer directly to the mixing buses of another digital mixer, so as to allow the two digital mixers to function as if they were one large-scale mixer having input channels equal in number to the total number of the respective input channels of the two digital mixers (see, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open Publication No. HEI-7-15284).
For such cascade connection, the digital mixers are provided with cascade input and output terminals. However, where there is employed a digital mixer of a given model (“first model”) using, as its terminals for normal input and output channels, terminals of the same type as cascade connecting terminals of another digital mixer of another model (“second model”), then all sound signals output from the first model to the second model can be handled in the second model only as “cascade signals”, which was very inconvenient. Further, because the specifications of the cascade connection variously differ among various models, it was very difficult to cascaded different models.